Nay, if suffering science herself is looked for, she may be found in the Gregorian calendar, for more than a century refused admission or recognition by an English parliament that would rather quarrel with all the stars in heaven than count time with Rome! "Truth," as Hallam remarks, "being no longer truth when promulgated by the pope!" Among the very few men in all England who treated the Gregorian calendar with any degree of politeness was Lord Chesterfield, then a member of parliament. He writes, (March 18th, 1751, old style,) "The Julian calendar was erroneous, and had overcharged the solar year with eleven days. Pope Gregory XIII. corrected this error. His reformed calendar was immediately received by all the Catholic powers of Europe, and afterward adopted by all the Protestant ones except Russia, Sweden, and England. It was not, in my opinion, very honorable for England to remain in a gross and avowed error, especially in such company. The inconvenience of it was likewise felt by all those who had foreign correspondences, whether political or mercantile."
Lord Chesterfield was mainly instrumental in getting up the bill for its introduction. On mentioning the project to the prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle, then in the zenith of his power, the noble duke seemed most conservatively alarmed at such an undertaking, and conjured the earl (Chesterfield) not to stir matters that had long been quiet; adding that he did not love new-fangled things. Lord Mahon, in his history, gives several curious instances of the resentment of the English people against those who aided in bringing about the change in the calendar; thus, when in 1754 Lord Macclesfield's son stood a great contested election in Oxfordshire, one of the most vehement cries raised against him was, "Give us back the eleven days we have been robbed of!" and even several years later, when Bradley, the astronomer, worn down by his labors in the cause of science, was sinking under mortal disease, many of the common people ascribed his sufferings to a judgment of Heaven for having taken part in that infamous undertaking.
Suffering science may again be found in England in the person of Alban Francis, insultingly refused the degree of A.M. by the University of Cambridge in 1687, but afterward mockingly offered it on condition that he—a Benedictine monk—should take the state oath pronouncing the Catholic religion damnable and idolatrous, when it was well known that the degree had been given to men of every variety of nationality and religious profession, even in one case to the Mohammedan secretary of the ambassador of Morocco!
Suffering science again in the English statutes, 7th Will. III., ch. 4, s. 1 and 9, by virtue of which:
1. If a Catholic in Ireland kept school, or taught any person any species of literature or science, such teacher was punishable by law with banishment; and if he returned, he was subject to be hanged as a felon.
2. If a Catholic child received literary instruction from a Catholic, either privately or at school, such child, even though in its infancy, incurred a forfeiture of all its property present or future.
3. And thus deprived of the means of knowledge, if the Catholic child went into a foreign country for education, the child incurred the same penalty, as also the person making any remittance of goods or money for its maintenance!
Suffering science again, within but a few years, in the persons of such geological writers as Dr. Buckland, denounced by leading English periodicals and respectable quarterlies—recognized organs of Protestant opinion—(each one a special, self-constituted, oecumenical council ad hoc,) for assigning dates to rocks and fossil remains, which were supposed by alarmed Protestant theologians to vary from the Mosaic accounts.
We present these facts not by way of the justification that, ignorance and persecution being alleged to exist on the Catholic side, there are also such things as Protestant persecution and ignorance; for the one will not excuse the other, any more than two wrongs will make a right.